Published: October 2, 2010

NEW DELHI — When India won its bid for the 2010 Commonwealth Games seven years ago, the event instantly became an emblem of national prestige. But as the country prepares to open the games on Sunday evening, an opportunity to burnish its global image has instead become a national embarrassment.

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Brian Sokol for The New York Times

Late last month, workers painted the outside of Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi, the primary site for the Commonwealth Games.

The litany of problems plaguing the games — collapsed footbridges, filthy dorms, cartoonish corruption — have not only made headlines around the world. They have left Indians to wonder why a country so promising in so many regards is incapable of organizing a signature event when the eyes of the world are focused on it.

The answer, to many of those involved with the games, is that India’s political culture, if prized for its commitment to democracy, often seems unable to transcend its own dysfunction. There were at least 21 governmental or quasi-governmental agencies involved in preparing for the games, yet none were ultimately in charge, forcing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to try to personally take command as things went awry in August. Analysts say the absence of a clear line of authority translated into an absence of urgency and accountability.

Moreover, crucial figures in organizing the games had almost no experience in staging international events and were products of an insular Indian political culture where cronyism and nepotism often trump competence.

More than a year ago, audits warned that preparations for the games were shamefully behind schedule. “Slackness in addressing these challenges may create major embarrassments for the country,” one report added.

That is indeed what happened. Top officials, meanwhile, have lashed out, sometimes against one another, defending their work while blaming others for the broader breakdown as India’s hyperactive media have gleefully documented the infighting.

“I think we have managed everything extremely well,” said Tejendra Khanna, the lieutenant governor of New Delhi, as he exited the athletes’ village on Wednesday after a quick tour of the emergency cleaning operation that began after arriving athletes complained about filthy bathrooms. “Extremely well.”

It did not look that way to much of the rest of the world, nor to many Indians. Preparations for the games have been so badly managed that in recent weeks a footbridge near the main stadium collapsed, injuring 27; the deputy chief of the games called the athletes’ dorms “uninhabitable”; several nations threatened to pull out, and some elite athletes have, put off by reports of lax preparations or concerns about the threat of terrorism.

Indian newspapers have carried accounts of graft and extravagance, with reports of $80 rolls of toilet paper, $61 soap dispensers and $125 first aid kits. Even last week, workers were rushing to pave roads, plant greenery and finish cleanup work outside different sites. Some stadiums still have never been tested.

The Commonwealth Games is a quadrennial competition for nations of the former British Empire, a second-tier event that became infused with a geopolitical buzz when India was selected as the host.

The inevitable comparisons with China’s staging of the 2008 Summer Olympics elevated the stakes; India’s bureaucratic efficiency was being tested as much as its athletes. It did not fare well.

China had the authoritarian advantage of being able to bulldoze historic neighborhoods, relocate large numbers of people by fiat and order a state press to write happy stories. It also spent an estimated $43 billion. Indian organizers, meanwhile, slogged through protracted litigation over the site of the athletes’ village and controversies over building roads too close to existing homes.

But beyond the public relations fallout, what has stirred middle-class anger and even brought an ad hominem rebuke from India’s Supreme Court is the way many aspects of a project advertised as transformative for residents of New Delhi have been wasted.

Some civic improvement projects like a restoration of the Old Delhi shopping district or a renovation of Connaught Place either never got off the ground or were never completed. Roadwork has been poorly done in many places, with potholes proliferating in the heavy rains.

“You see the mismanagement all around,” said Jaya Kakkar, a professor of history at the Shyam Lal College of Delhi University. “There is no accountability. Every day they say all is well, but all is not well. We are paying for all this, and this is what we are getting? These games have become a national shame.”